Inside MLB Draft day with Siena’s Dan Swain

By Sam Blum - sblum@digitalfirstmedia.com - Dan Swain scrolls through his phone seconds after finding out he was drafted. For nearly a minute, he didn't know which team had picked him.

NEWTON, Mass. >> Every few minutes, Dan Swain, sweat caked into his red workout shirt, would pick up his phone off the floor of the small Boston gym where he was lifting weights — a futile effort to distract himself from the only thing on his mind.

He was waiting for this moment for a year. A call from a Major League scout. A text of congratulations from teammates, family and friends. A tweet from the MLB Draft account with his name on it. Anything.

“As you get later in the day, there’s more of a chance you get called,” Swain said, speaking in terms of probability, before addressing that assertion’s underlying reality. “There’s also less of a chance.”

Swain expected it all a year ago, when he put up All-MAAC numbers at Siena and was told by an MLB Scout that he wouldn’t have to go back to school for his senior year. As a junior, he was confident he would be drafted. But that scout didn’t come through, and 40 rounds came and went with silence.

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This time, there wasn’t that same confidence. Just a little bit of desperate hope. The kind of hope from a player who has always told himself he’d be in Major Leagues by the time he was 25. The player who purposely didn’t graduate as a senior so he could focus everything on becoming a professional baseball player.

If he didn’t get drafted, Swain’s plan was unclear. Maybe he’d sign as a free agent. Maybe he’d play independent ball or in a Puerto Rican league. There was plan A, and then there was the unknown.

This is the Draft story that’s more common, but less told. The one of the unheralded player whose chances rely on a pick that few outside his friends and family will even notice. While experts break down the first 75 names called, there are literally thousands more players, like Swain, just hoping to get a tiny signing bonus and a crack at playing professionally. The former Saints outfielder received exactly that Wednesday.

As the 30th round came and went, his anxiety started to mount. He’d spent the late morning and early afternoon in the batting cages for three hours. Then he spent another two hours lifting weights.

But there was no mental escape. At the cages, Swain quietly took batting practice as the other hitters talked about Matt Tabor, a local high school prodigy who was drafted in the third round. They talked about players they knew on other college teams who were waiting to hear their named called. On the walls were homages to other local players who’d been drafted. On the benches behind the cages was a New England-area MLB Draft preview. Swain’s name was absent from it.

At the gym, Swain’s trainer, Tony Gentilcore, let everyone who walked in know what was happening. They cracked jokes — “First round, third pick?” and “I’ll tweet them and tell them to draft you” — that were lighthearted to those that made them, but not for a player and person who’d based his life’s aspirations on this very day.

“I have to keep reminding myself that 10 rounds is a lot,” Swain said, picking up and putting down his phone with 10 rounds to go. “I feel like I’m running out of time.”

It was exactly 40 minutes later when Swain was chosen by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 34th round with the 1,012th overall pick. He was in the middle of doing front squats, and didn’t respond the first couple of times someone in the gym said his name to let him know texts were flooding his phone.

Once Swain rested the weights, he crouched, knees bent just above the ground, scrolling through Twitter. For more than a minute, all he knew was that he was drafted. He didn’t know the team. His call with Arizona scout Dennis Sheehan minutes later cleared up any doubt.

Swain, by his own estimation, is a player who isn’t great at anything. But isn’t bad at anything either. He hit .324 with nine home runs as the Saints leadoff man while driving in 36 runs. He stole nine bases and played a clean center field. He was a good college player, but one who let doubt seep in after not getting picked last year, and as the rounds mounted again on Wednesday.

Still, Swain rarely let his emotions waver on Wednesday. He would say things like, “I’m not sure if what I’m feeling is nerves or hunger,” before snacking on peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets. He joked that this story’s headline should refer to him as “ruggedly handsome”.

He showed genuine excitement as former summer ball teammates got picked before him, telling nice stories about why he liked them. He texted Siena teammate Joe Drpich in the morning, who also hoped to be drafted, and the two tried to build up each other’s confidence.

But every so often, he’d let the frustration show. Just past 3 p.m., he said out of nowhere, “I’m not enjoying this. I just want the call.” He compared the situation to a game of grade school kickball. “It’s nicer to be one of earlier ones picked,” he said, annoyed at how long it was taking. He talked about how he may have struck out too much, been too inconsistent, not shown one exceptional tool.

On the way home from the gym — officially a draftee of the Diamondbacks — the doubt that had been under the surface for a full year had vanished. So too had the giddy excitement. It felt like his birthday, he said, when he wakes up excitedly only to realize that nothing actually felt different.

His mom, Karen Lumino, spent the day driving to Vermont for a work trip. She had a coworker in the car checking the draft on Twitter non-stop. As the rounds got later, she started to piece together what she would say to Dan if he wasn’t drafted. How she’d have to reconcile the disappointment in a heartbreaking phone call.

The second Dan got home he called her. She continued to tell him how proud she was, how much he’d earned this chance. Then he started to respond to the texts from all his friends. The Siena baseball group message was filled with more than a dozen congratulations. When it took more than an hour for Swain to respond, someone finally wrote “Hello?” Swain wrote back joking that he’d get them all free Diamondbacks tickets.

His Draft experience is one that rarely gets told. The commissioner didn’t call his name. There was no national TV interview, and there wasn’t a Diamondbacks hat and jersey with his name on it ready to put on. In reality, there are no free tickets for him to give away.

Swain is an introspective person. He’s in tune with how he’s feeling and why he’s feeling it. He welcomes questions about his state of mind, and answers them honestly. He understands not getting drafted last year fueled his doubt this year and he understands that baseball is a sport that continues to humble you.

Most importantly, he understands what he has now is a long shot to make a career out of baseball. But he also believes that’s all he needs.

“Don’t sleep on me,” he said, unprompted on the drive home. “I’m going to surprise some people.”